GLOSIX Part 4-5. Command line interfaces

Contents

• Introduction
• Recommendations

| Back to LSD2 Table of Contents |

Introduction

Consistency in the command line interface is convenient and time-saving for users and avoids potential errors. For example, if options and values for similar purposes are identical from program to program, then users need not remember several different commands or search in manuals for specifications peculiar to each program. Furthermore, such consistency enables the use of global variables for option names and values in scripts, etc., that can apply universally where applicable.

The goal of this section is to provide a fist set of recommendations concerning the program command line interfaces suitable for LSD.

Recommendations

We recommend the use of GNU's "Standards for Command Line Interfaces".

The GNU standards follow the POSIX guidelines for command-line options, with some extensions. One of these extensions is the use of long-named options to enable consistency from program to program, by providing a larger range of possibilities than the UNIX one-letter style can allow.

A list of common option names is provided in the section of the standards referenced above. GNU recommends using these names for similar options in other programs:

---

One of the advantages of long-named options is that they can be consistent from program to program. For example, users should be able to expect the "verbose" option of any GNU program which has one, to be spelled precisely `--verbose'. To achieve this uniformity, look at the table of common long-option names when you choose the option names for your program.

---

Two options are required in all programs:

`help'

Used to ask for brief usage information.

`version'

Print the version number.

Note that the same consistency argument applies to values. It is equally confusing and error-prone when similar option values change from program to program (e.g. "F", "fr", "fra", "French", "Français", etc. for the French language). However, GNU does not provide recommendations for values.

MULTEXT/EAGLES is currently building a list of standard option names and values for use in LSD. [Help needed].

Among GLOSIX standard options, the following will be provided:

`lang'

Indicates the language being processed.

The value of this option is composed of one of the following (the two letter-code version is recommended by the "HyperText Markup Language Specification Version 3.0")

• a two-letter code from ISO 639 (e.g., "en" for English;
• a three-letter code from ISO 639-2 (e.g., "eng" for English);
• one of the above extended by a country code from ISO 3166 (e.g. "en.uk" or "eng.uk" for English as spoken in the United Kingdom).

`wsd'

Indicates the character set used.

The value of this option is the character set name (ISO-8859-1, etc.). WSD stands for "writing system declaration", borrowed from the TEI